Anywho, here's a list of stuff I use to speed through runs when I just want a PQI over with so the Flaming dungeon will move (or is it the other way around?), or when I want to complete a dungeon for completion and I'm lazy.

1) Prepping Mystera

Benefits - you'll get piety for popcorn bowling, imawaling, endiswalling, fireballing and so on and so forth. This translates to an early mana point or two speeding you towards 2-3 fireballs per full mana pool, mystic balance for classes which want it, refreshment or - most importantly - a big string of weakenings to completely remove problems with magic resistant bosses. The last reason makes it my default "lazy spellcaster" approach. Just don't do it in all-magic damage monsters dungeons (Vicious Steel and Cursed Oasis, pretty much).

2) Prepping EM

Benefits - uhhh... Too many to list. Imawal for easy XP is probably to biggest one, and it means efficent leveling even in tricky dungeons, entanlgement is dirt cheap and a repeatable slowing effect (destroys blinking bastards too!), filling up a level with plants allows for a clearance spike and/or a hilarious conversion into TT. Vine form can give me a few points of damage resistance for AA's, as well as a significant and cheap early health boost which is also dandy with B2P, and if everything else fails I can easily swap over to whoever and desecrate EM + drink a burn salve for 3 indulgences and 25 piety. She feels like the most experienced player in a moba squad placed on a hard support role who destroys the opposition with overwhelming utility, or bards in D&D when they raise the effective challenge rating of the entire party buy 50% while seeming useless.

3) Prepping EM + Codex

(Same as above except on psychadelic mushrooms. Lethal joke character defined.) Pick either a priest or a monk and go nuts - repeatable slow in entanglement, clearance mana coming out of your ears, damage resistance to tank a hit or two if monk, healing potions + huge health pool if priest, bigass first striking fireballs which also screw over monsters that would retaliate on their own. It's crazy powerful, different and screws over cursed oasis on so many levels.

4) Prepping Binlor

Provides the biggest melee damage % boost in game, handy dandy full physical resistance in a pinch, guaranteed pissorf, guaranteed imawal, magic resistance and both enables and rewards removing walls from maps. He's undescribeably good for anyone but pure spellcastes.

5) Titan's Guitar

It removes all walls for the cost of not prepping another item. Cuts you off from binlor, but, dude, no walls... For when you REALLY don't want to think about that aspect of the game.

6) Prepping Taurog

Has several features, but for those times when you only really want a Getindare, a big stack of pity, tons of CP, free items and a straightforward (near) warmonger game. Also for guaranteed -dmg for VHos. You can pretty much ignore glyphs (apart from maybe prepping more glyphs for more piety), and shops (if you want all the gear, plus the gear's not that terrible).

7) Prepping GG

Much like Earthmother - there's no reason not to most of the time. Getting to 50 piety with him and swapping out is the absolute worst case scenario - and it's still pretty much free 50 piety. Snagging a Humility for the XP benefits on non-spellcesters is just way too good to pass up, it guarantees ease of disposing with phys res bossess (through the consecrated strike), a few hits of absolution is often fine, and having debuff removal or a heal in a pinch is also good. Plus you get piety for converting stuff you'd convert anyway. Also, it's probably the best coice for warmonger runs (conversion piety much like taurog, but more utility - taurog's better for miser runs).

8) Namtar's Ward

Ask Avatar. Well it was supposed to be brokenish anyway.

9) Crystal Ball

You mean I can has a few schadenfraude potions at a discount? Sign me up. I don't do it that much nowadays because I got tired.

10) Halflings (and to a degree gnomes)

For sub-vicious stuff (allthough I've done easier vicious too). You wouldn't believe the shennanigans you can get up to with the little buggers. Halflings in particular because health boosts are all over the place. I've potion spiked the vicious Blah Blah with non-priest halflings, and that's just if you hoard the potions. If you don't hoard them you can convert them for GG/Drac piety making them guys who convert for piety twice, you can do stupid things with CP wizards, you can do all sorts of stupidity with halfling bloodmages, you can do all sorts of foolishness with Codex EM, you can spike anything anywhere...

That's all I can think of for now.

But really guys, Codex + Em + Priest + Halfling. I haven't played in a while, I'll fire up the game right now and destroy something with it

She feels like the most experienced player in a moba squad placed on a hard support role who destroys the opposition with overwhelming utility, or bards in D&D when they raise the effective challenge rating of the entire party buy 50% while seeming useless.

Earthmother quietly went from being the queen of mediocrity to being a ruthlessly efficient machine. I'm actually very happy with how she turned out in the end, even if I still don't like greenblood much (yeah, yeah, I know what acid casters are capable of. Still don't like it). The clearance change made all the difference, and it's nice to have a non-percentage based mana restoration boon out there.

3) Prepping EM + Codex

Pick either a priest or a monk and go nuts

Wizard also works nicely.

5) Titan's Guitar

It removes all walls for the cost of not prepping another item. Cuts you off from binlor, but, dude, no walls... For when you REALLY don't want to think about that aspect of the game.

I despise the Titan Guitar. It's one of the game's most useless sub-dungeons, and I curse it whenever I find it. On the other hand, its abusive potential is out of this world.

9) Crystal Ball

You mean I can has a few schadenfraude potions at a discount? Sign me up. I don't do it that much nowadays because I got tired.

A little risky on low-gold dungeons, but definitely a winner if you've got a lot of spending money to burn.

Darvin wrote: EM - The clearance change made all the difference, and it's nice to have a non-percentage based mana restoration boon out there.

Tbh, with the new change to cydstepp I'm a bit worried she's to good. Even without the change, tbh. And not really worried as, um, certain really. Greenblood could probably use some love (doesn't it remove curse?), but I think the repeatable non-scaling-cost entanglement is just way out there (for one thing)...

3) Prepping EM + Codex

Pick either a priest or a monk and go nuts

Wizard also works nicely.

True but it's still a wizard fireballing stuff. This is for psychadelic PQI race/class/badge combos where you have to go spellcasting elf/gnome priest or monk. Well, then, now you can

9) Crystal Ball

A little risky on low-gold dungeons, but definitely a winner if you've got a lot of spending money to burn.

Well, it's not like people hadn't been spending money on 4 schadenfraude potions back when you could prep alch for it, or wouldn't if you still could. If you prep this thing it ends up costing you... well 30 gold for 4 hits or 18 for 3 which is significantly less. Or am I wrong somewhere?

but I think the repeatable non-scaling-cost entanglement is just way out there (for one thing)...

5 piety for a mass-WEYTWUT is more than a bit extreme, I will agree.

Well, it's not like people hadn't been spending money on 4 schadenfraude potions back when you could prep alch for it, or wouldn't if you still could. If you prep this thing it ends up costing you... well 30 gold for 4 hits or 18 for 3 which is significantly less. Or am I wrong somewhere?

4-Schadenfreude was more expensive, but you could use them consecutively (and add a crystal ball to the beginning and end of the combo, to boot) so although it was very pricey it was also way scarier.

Darvin wrote:4-Schadenfreude was more expensive, but you could use them consecutively (and add a crystal ball to the beginning and end of the combo, to boot) so although it was very pricey it was also way scarier.

True, true. Not saying anything should be done about CB, just that it's a bit of an "exploit light" and one of those things you can bring along with just about any spellcaster and not regret it.